Parent Rearing the Scarlet Macaw: a Comparative Study

Abstract

Motivation

P sittacine birds have always fascinated me. I do not think there is another animal that is as beautiful and intelligent, nor as comical as parrots. Nearly 15 years ago my devotion to parrots led to breeding macaws. Good information was difficult to obtain. Much of the information that was current at the time is no longer believed to be accurate. Fifteen years ago I was told, "Baby birds should only lose about ten percent of their peak weight." Yet, all my macaw babies lost a great deal more than that, which made me feel that I was doing a poor job. I wanted to learn how parent-raised birds thrived, compared to my hand-raised babies. I also wanted to learn at what weight and age the babies would peak, wean, and fledge. Of course, I was interested in how much of a weight loss would occur. Not least of my curiosity was the question of whether parent-raised birds could be good pets.

Procedure

To make a fair comparison, I decided to compare only parent-raised birds to their hand-raised siblings. I had raised Scarlet babies from two pairs. Mark Anthony and Cleopatra had produced more babies and their babies had been very large. I did not think it

 

would be meaningful to compare the weights of their offspring to chicks from Kelly and Magic. Although, I had noticed that certain aspects of development occurred at about the same time for chicks from both pairs. These included weaning, fledging, achieving peak weight and dropping down to the lowest weight after they peaked.

I began weighing the parent-raised babies when the oldest chick was six days old and the youngest was three days old. They were weighed every other morning around 7:30 A.M., until they were three weeks old. When the youngest baby reached three weeks of age, the chicks were weighed daily. During the first three weeks the parent-raised babies occasionally had a small amount of food in their crops; I never felt it was significant enough to measure.

The hand-raised babies were weighed every day between 6:30 A.M. and 8:00 A.M.. They were always weighed when their crops were empty. All hand-raised babies were fed around the dock. I must emphasize that I do not consider hand-raising babies and merely hand-feeding them to be the same. So, my babies receive a great deal of nurturing. I expect the growth rate of hand-fed babies would vary considerable depending on the methods used to raise them.

 

Adult birds were fed twice a day before their chicks hatched. Their diet included a diversity of fresh foods that varied according to availability. Staple components in the morning diet were sweet potatoes, corn on the cob (par cooked), a bean mix, and coconut. In addition they received two different types of fruits and vegetables. Occasionally, pasta and homemade muffins were served. Their dinner consisted of Harrison's pellets and one almond each. Snacks included two pistachios a day. Once the chicks hatched the numbers of feeding increased till the birds were being fed six times a day and were consuming seven times more food than the two adults alone.

History

Scarlet Macaws Kelly and Magic, had previously produced three chicks that were taken from the nest at various ages (7 days, 13 days and 24 days) and hand-raised. I did not hatch any of their chicks in an incubator. Kelly and Magic were not a good producing pair like Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.

Assuming that our information is correct, Kelly is a 27 years old domestic female hatched at one of the Busch Gardens. Magic is a wild bird that still had a quarantine band when I purchased him. His previous owner had acquired him directly from a quarantine station five years earlier. Kelly and Magic were not purchased as a pair. After five years their relationship with their former mates seemed platonic. So, the pairs were split up. Kelly and Magic have now been together for seven years.

In 1998 Kelly laid five eggs. The first clutch consisted of two clear eggs. The Second clutch contained three eggs. One egg was clear, one hatched on July 26 and the other hatched on July 29. Both chicks were healthy at hatch.

 

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